Holiday Time, Christmas edition

photo of the city with Empire State Building taken by my grandmother, circa 1930-40(?)

The holidays bring on such nostalgia- every year, October, Halloween, fades into Thanksgiving which seems to meld right into Christmas, and a blanket of moodiness and brooding seems to be par for the course. 

Time's Square in 1930s or 1940s, photo taken by my grandmother

Even as I write this I cannot say what compels me, or what I need to say, exactly.  I've been thinking about New York a lot- mostly how, four years out, it is [finally, sadly] not my home anymore.  I have no lingering routine to latch onto, no couches or beds where I am "always welcome".  Maybe that's why I've also had this greater longing for it..to be back there, living...because I'd have to make it happen intentionally now.  I'd have to commit and drive forward hard; no more couch surfing to quell my city-urge.
When I think of New York, then I start thinking of all the people in it, that had/have remained there while I have been a little bit of everywhere, people that I have saudade for as much as I have saudade for the place itself, the attributes of the city itself.  All my oldest girlfriends have moved on with their lives, domestically speaking- the grapevine has told me even my best single pal has moved in with her beau, all the way out to Brooklyn. I'm now an outsider with no place to stay in the city, and not much left in common with all those people I love anyway- all of that is no longer mine.

Recognizing my great New York loss is in tandem, of course, with my mother passing and my dad being, well, quite frankly, inaccessible to me in other ways; if there's no New York City left for me, there's no East Coast left for me whatsoever.  We've all but sold Her house, and Larry, a.k.a. "dad", sold the investment properties, and the Hatter children are back to being exactly as we always tended to be.  Alone and drifting [mostly] magnificently.  Pennsylvania is a notch on the bedpost of growing up, of personal history.  Its a fact in a list of facts.  I go by "erinn kathryn" now, by the way.  My history, in some ways, starts here.  I joke about entering my Renaissance, but its not so far from the truth.

My boat is navigating uncharted waters.  Especially at this time of year.  This big first year.  What does an orphaned [adult] child do on the holidays with no home to go to, and no people there waiting?  As much as this freedom to do "whatever", to have no holiday obligation, sounds freeing and glorious to the adult child with parents and hated traditions and myriad expectations, it is not all that its cracked up to be.  It is overwhelming.  It is grief-triggering.  Its the snowball at the top of the mountain that gathers weight, mass, girth as it collects debris on its descent.

I'm saying all of this because the cherished attempts to make Christmas feel 'normal' this year revolve around a trip to Colorado to get swallowed up by the love and joy and excitement of all that is "Christmas" to little ones-the "magic"- and their parents, who are more like cousins than aunts or uncles, and who know what its like to be orphaned adult children too.  I am looking forward to this indubitably, and unashamedly hoping it might feed into a new tradition.  For I am, we are, entering a new era, using only our instincts to keep the boat afloat and headed in the right direction.

Holiday Time, Arty Party

Say hello to boreal owl, toad, and chickadee...Introducing three of the twelve new totem animals on exhibit at Guardino Gallery.       They're small, they're up for sale and they're cheap!  Perfect little gifts for the holidays       or keep one for yourself.  What is your spirit animal/totem animal?  What is your story?  Also eager to do commissions if I haven't called your animal yet    Come on out~

6-9 Friday November 25th, 2939 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211

house II (moving forward by going back...)

...to peeing in the yard after dark.  Feels good to be back to quirky rustic livin'.

This is why I've been away from my usual amount of  'screen time' this month (hence no blog posts): engaged in the labor of scouring, seeking, visiting, meeting, selecting and moving-into a new home-and-studio-combined.  The studio-movement portion is still in the works, but it is time to welcome you to my humble and quaint, private new home with no potty or fridge but a deluxe amount of solitude, ambiance and flow.

 

 

 

There she is:

A beaut.

I have a hot plate, a dry sink, and a chicken key to the facilities inside the 'mother' ship to my 'mother-in-law' suite, with a lovely gal inside of it who lives life much like me.  And the sound of ducks laughing in the morning.  I have all I need here folks.

It takes me back to my favorite days of living solo in Alaska, where music could be loud at all hours of the night, wine could be consumed in unabashed quantity, burning wood stoves and tree needles were smelled from the open doorway, and a sense of calm pervaded everything (though I won't glaze over the week of 'negative-fifties' or the nagging winter wish for someone sweet to snuggle up with that comes with Fairbanks' version).
 My bed is up high just like before, and I hosted my first friend for tea just the other morning.  Its definitely one-at-a-time-guests style here.  Its good.  A home is important to me, crucial to be "just so", always needs to be described as my sanctuary or else its just plain miserable, and likened to my cozy rabbit hole to retreat & recuperate from a day of engaging with the outside world.  A home is not a house.  But the perfect house can make the ideal home...

'house', the book, (posted just below) appeared in my dream the other night, as an offering I gave to a particularly special little brown-skinned boy, a promise to return to the place he navigated: a retreat center in the middle of the city...sweet,warm, ornate structural and soulful oasis of spirit, flow and simplicity of play & wonderment in the middle of the drone of daily life tasks.  One square block of utopia.

This makes sense pretty much only to the dreamer and her dream therapist (i.e. "me" and "she"), but I thought it pretty extra-ordinary that my tiny book of actual concrete existence, made almost eight years ago by a younger, less aligned and far more pessimistic version of myself, would be the perfect gift and promise to, well, myself, in the aspect of my little-boy "self" in the realm of the unconscious.  And so I dug it out and placed it high on a shelf, to regard it with new honor.

Metaphorically sacred structure ("house") as a promise to return to sacred metaphorical structure ("retreat").  Whoa.  Dreams...

Structures, space and notions of home continue to be the steam in my engine, I guess.
 No, I know.

"house"

her

string

of

yellow

                across  road                                w

                                                           e

                                           and the birds fl

                                                           
with heavy



silver clouds,
                             which

                              looked
                      B  I  G  G  E  R

B              I             G

        Raindrops

Fel
     l

Sunlight

Wiiiiiiiddder




[house, ekh, 2004]

an offering

In the waning hours of this new moon in Libra on September twenty-seventh in the year two-thousand-and-eleven, it is just the right time to give a small offering       to my mother      
in hopes that she may have an easy transition to whatever sphere lies out there for her
                         
                             ....in my dreams she has settled in a bit into the notion of navigating this new realm         her hair has come back and her presence is lighter, easier, ghostly but peaceful          she's even begun to hang a few of my paintings around her space-

 

__________________________________________________________________________________
I perform this offering in part because I am just learning that it is tradition in Hindu culture on this very day to offer up something in honor of ancestors-past in hopes, neigh belief, that this offering will ease these ancestors' transitions to heaven from the Pitru-loka, the realm between heaven and earth                                          The Pitru Paksha  (fortnight of the ancestors), as this period is called, is an important 16-day lunar period when Hindus pay homage to their ancestors with [food] offerings (for in this in-between realm, they need nourishment too). The final day, today,....Sarvapitri amavasya ("all ancestors' new moon day") is intended for all ancestors, irrespective of the lunar day they died. It is oft considered the most important day of the Pitru Paksha.
So, tonight as I retire I would like to make an offering to my mother      twofold-               the completed last collaborative painting, titled and conceptualized by her experience, materialized by my hand

'deconstruction' ( April)

and a poem that makes me think of her, for her love of swans             and bids her an easy fall into the water, current, to where she will go                       

the Swan by Rilke

This laboring through what is still undone,

as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way

is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying- to let go, no longer feel 

the solid ground we stand on every day-

is like her anxious letting herself fall

into the water, which receives her gently

and which, as though with reverence and joy,

draws back past her in streams on either side;

while infinitely silent and aware,

 in her full majesty and ever more

indifferent, she condescends to glide.

_________

Homing* for the soul/ Feats of strength part 1

There is a chapter in Women Who Run with the Wolves, one of my most treasured books, addressing the need of the soul to return home.  I have always, and probably will always, be intrigued by the notion of "home", including the idea(s) that it is not a physical place (though it can be) and it most likely also is not one's literal home of house or town or family unit or general place of upbringing (though I suppose it can be).    The latter attribute is becoming ever more important, with the loss of my go-to 'notions of home', since my mother died in May.  Already emptied of its contents, soon her house will be sold-  the one I grew up in-  and with it all purpose for going back to the east coast- to that 'hometown'-  will be gone too.  Periodically I wonder, what will going "home for the holidays" mean for my brother and I now?

This chapter in WWRwtW addresses just that: the need for the 'home of the soul'.  It is told through the archetype of the seal-woman who marries a land-bound human, yet whose soul ultimately needs to return to its home in the sea.  Ironically, skimming through the book on Monday night inside my tent in the woods with a view of the sea, this is the chapter I stopped on, or some might say, it stopped there for me.
Let's just say it was timely.

What I have begun to acknowledge, and to honor, over the past few years is that my soul's home is in nature.  More specifically it is in the woods.  My soul needs the trees around, the variations on 'green' (I have even had a dream entirely in shades of green, but that is for another post), the myriad of mosses and leaves, and glimpses at wildlife existing undisturbed, or as it should.
After two prior but failed attempts to take myself on an overnight walkabout through the woods of Ecola State Park alone, my soul's urging this time was persistent, determined.  I have had some fear surrounding the idea of backpacking and camping alone and had managed to quell my soul's urging with a day in the nearby park, a few hours at the beach, or by packing in all my time in nature in to my three weeks in Alaska, where companions for overnight trips abound.  Not to mention, egoical, societal excuses are easy to come by to justify why not to go...
Mine sound like-
...But I have phone calls to make and errands to run and my day off is the day to do them
...ugh, the gas money!
...I'm tired- I want to sleep- I am not motivated enough to pack my gear or plan a trip or get in the car or....
...I could spend the whole day at my studio-   and then the whole day gets whittled down to an afternoon spent staring and fussing and not creating much at all.

Even the soul has limits.  Intuition knows when the time is dire. Clarissa Estes in the book encourages : "...be brief but potent....[say] 'I am going'.  These are the best words ever.  Say them. Then go."

So, I performed my most daunting feat of strength this week- backpacking alone.  I went into the woods, pitched my tent, prepared my dinner and sat with myself and a deluge of stars and the sound of the waves crashing and the chill of the fall air. Alone.  Al-one.  All one.  Then I woke up and hiked and observed and talked to wildlife, and breathed deeply and filled my creative well in my soul-home. All alone.

My textural impressions, my color palette inspirations, my well-filling bits:

 

 

 

 

 

And with the recent experience of going into the woods with ecologists, I found I was able, still, to see the forest with new eyes and insights.  I know now why some trees do this:

or this:

or this:

Estes says "solitude is not an absence of energy or action...but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul.  In ancient times...purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative.  It was used to heal fatigue and prevent weariness.  It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life".

So, the best advice I can give, and abide by, is that when at once you are world-weary, take your soul home...and go alone.  Perform a feat of strength.



[* silly-anecdotal-human-moment:  for about 29 years I thought the word was 'honing', as in to hone in on something'.  I always had this visual of the infamous pigeon, I now know to be called the HOME-ing pigeon, as a television cartoon, dive-bombing a particular site      HONING in on it, and taking it out    that being its sole job                ...turns out its actual purpose was just to return home.... to be able to 'remember the way home' over long distances.  I get that now.  My own Oprah-esque "a ha! moment"           sometimes the obvious escapes me         but not forever!     wouldn't mom be proud...]

recluse

...man, I feel like this post has been ' a long time coming'.  I just couldn't nurture the seedling,  nor tame the beast    for weeks       I couldn't focus, couldn't rein it in         I couldn't find the words or topic that seemed even remotely relevant or valuable.  I didn't want to just drop another promo ¡BLAM! for another art show opening...(which is THIS WEEKEND at People's Art of Portland at Pioneer Place Mall.  The totems will be there people! TOTEMS.).

For a while that's all I could muster though         Bare bones, basics.  Straight facts               So I remained recluse.



What I am saying here, now, after two weeks of stewing, is mainly my admission of just that. I have been stewing in the throes of grief- solitary, paper-thin, teary-eyed and emotional          Ungrounded.   To say the least           Tethered to the world that exists by just a mere- but sturdy- thread....it must have been silk.

For, the storm has passed for now, for the moment, and I am here to re-emerge intact.

When I withdraw this far into my turtle shell of loss and grieving over my dear mom, I don't often create visually     My focus just isn't there       It seems meaningless or trite or pointless then-                   So  instead I take to constructing poems from a pile of sentence fragments, phrases, and words lain out before me.   Its a psyche check-in, I like to think.  If you "follow" me, you know the drill...

There's a series developing- aptly called "grief: part _____"

                        and they go like this:

grief: part one, 6/28/2011

grief: part two, 7/12/2011

grief: part three, 9/8/2011

In the midst of my floating, hanging by that paradoxically strong single thread,

I worked on the tiniest paintings

(each roughly 1 1/2" x 2 1/4" on wood scrap)

I made some new works, and managed to put them on my website

                     and

I have been inspired by these new-found blogs/artists:
...for totems I dig the Village Dog
...which directed me to the work of Gala Bent and her blog called drifts and scatters (how fun!)
...and this work of Gordon Cheung's ....

....and do you know about Amargosa?  There's a fabulous documentary to do justice to the tale of lovely Marta Becket, a total inspiration for the way to shape one's artist-life.  I cheers to that      ...and to the grace and commitment to know when to bow out, and when to drive hard, re-emerge.

New Painting at New Brow PDX

The 2nd Annual "New Brow" show opens Thursday at Portland Center for the Performing Arts as part of First Thursday.  I am pleased to be a part of what's happening in Portland, thanks to the awesomeness of Chris Haberman and Jason Brown.  Love what they do! 

Along with 49 other Portland artists which include my personal faves Chris, Jason, Anna Macgruder and Brett Superstar, see one of my new paintings, entitled glacial.  Plus enjoy a cocktail at Art Bar with yours truly.

Just sayin'...

 Show runs until Sept 30th.

subarctic animalia

These new creatures were generated in the midst of my three week stint in interior Alaska...and thanks to my friends, the inhabitants of a land where wildlife abounds.  (I realize the one key player I am missing is the elusive moose....)

'lynx' from totem series

Lynx reveals secrets of hidden and the unseen, lies and falsehoods.  Lynx offers keen sight, trust of intuitions & teaches ability to access secrets, mysteries and hidden aspects of yourself.

'hummingbird' from totem series

 Hummingbird shows endurance & healing ability, enhances awareness.  Hummingbird shows how to accomplish what seems impossible and how to bring the miracle of joy back into your life.

'dragonfly' from totem series

Dragonfly: lightness of body,expression of emotional and mental aspects, fresh air and new perspective, allows inner light to shine through. Teaches a mastery of moving quickly with precision, breaks down illusions, heightens visual depth and aids in changes that are swift with emphasis on the emotions and un/subconscious.

'bear' from totem series

Bear represents the sub/unconscious mind, strength, grounding, inner energy of soul to find answers, caution and defense, and inner quiet/calm.

In a Time of Change: The Art of Fire

Today I was invited to traipse around the territory of an "experimental forest", or Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, called Bonanza Creek, just outside of Fairbanks.  Along with a few of my fellow artists, others who had been chosen for this artist residency: In a Time of Change: The Art of Fire ( see artist's call here), I spent a happy sunny day learning about the myriad of ecological factors- wildland fire being just one of them- that have an impact on the precious boreal forest and its five tree species: birch, aspen, balsam poplar, white spruce, and black spruce.  I was particularly interested in the 'carcasses' (i.e. remaining fallen dead trees) of birch, and the way the birch skins seemed to wrinkle up and separate from the core of the tree (which rotted), but [the skin] remained intact:

It did seem carcass-like, corpse-ian even, like elephant legs left from a massacre.

But while I was photographing these carcasses strewn about the forest, I began to notice that growing on  them were tiny little micro-cosmic landscapes:  mushrooms and cladonia were like "trees" in this world in miniature, and variants of green mosses were like the tundra tussocks or grasslands.









 
Sometimes old carcass bark even served as a mountain range in my mini landscapes:

I did my best to focus my attention, every moment be engaged, and let my brain act as a sponge absorbing all of the science jargon so far from my vocabulary and vernacular, to feel connected to the forest and its components both momentous and minute, and gather fodder over which to stew, to create this body of work for show a year from now (Aug 2012) regarding wildfire, ecology, the boreal forest and climate change.